An Educational Complaint

   The line between right and wrong is often said to be a matter of perspective, but people often mistake the meanings of these words with "correct" and "incorrect", which blurs the lines even further. In the context of The Negro's Complaint the issue of slavery is laid bare, in a way that appeals primarily to the moral compass. Yet in Pity for Poor Africans, Cowper does something different. He lays out his internal conflict, claiming that he knows that slavery is wrong "I own I am shock'd at the purchase of slaves," then turns to explain that though it would be right to try and end it the correct thing socially is to be silent. The excuses are both ridiculous and desperate, they reek of forced justification. Yet it is the story of the boy in school that really makes the poem.
   The boy in the story is against the idea of stealing the apples from a neighbor, it is initially strictly a moral issue. It is when the other children threaten to keep the apples they steal from him that he buckles. This portion mirrors the first half of the poem in which Cowper argues that though slavery is wrong it would be awful to be the only nation without. By taking the moral conundrum away from the touchy subject of slavery it becomes easier to see how frivolous the actual argument is. The fear isn't really to be without dessert in the first place, just to be the only one without. The whole poem becomes satirical and those who would pose such arguments are exposed as disingenuous. When the argument is considered from this angle it becomes apparent that the argument is strictly a social one.
   Remembering The Negroes Complaint, and how it poses that the issue of slavery goes against nature's claim of equality, an interesting opinion from the poet himself emerges. Cowper's poems are two halves to a whole. Half of his argument claims that slavery is not an issue of inequality, because skin color cannot  "forfeit nature's claim" and god himself would answer with fury upon it's proponents. The other half states that it is instead is a social, issue, thus concretely stating that society is in direct opposition to God in regards to slavery.